Implications of trombiculid mite bites: report of a case and submission of evidence in a murder trial

Bites of Trombiculid mites implicated a suspect during a homicide investigation. Clinical documentation of the bites, correlation with entomological studies, and submission of evidence at trial are reported. Insects that have a discrete geographic distribution and leave bites of a characteristic nature may have important forensic science implications.     

Community Development Block Grant: The Role of Federal Requirements

The CDBG program provides an excellent opportunity to studywhat local governments do to carry out national policy whenit is stated in general terms and they are left to their owndevices, and what they do differently when policy is interpretedin explicit regulations which are enforced. This article reviewswhat happened with two major legislative guidelines (low incometargeting and community participation) during the first sixyears of the CDBG program, including a period during which HUDinterpretations and enforcement varied greatly. It appears thatstrong federal enforcement caused a small increment in low incometargeting overall; but rigorous HUD direction and enforcement,combined with strong citizen participation, was necessary forsome jurisdictions to emphasize targeting. The research is pertinentin the present era of attempts toward major relaxation of federalgrant conditions and enforcement programs.     

Narrative accounts from the citizens,victims, and offenders restoring justice program

This paper describes the Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice (CVORJ) program, a prison-based program conducted as a pilot study at the Washington State Reformatory. The program brings together offenders and victims - though not involved in the same crime - in the company of interested community members to discuss restorative justice principles. The program focuses on the sharing of personal narratives of crime to explore how the harms resulting from crime can best be addressed and justice achieved. Of interest was how a restorative justice model that highlighted community participation could be incorporated into a correctional setting and whether healing could result from the use of surrogate offenders, victims, and community members. The restorative nature of the program, its method of operation, results from the qualitative evaluation, and key implementation challenges are presented.     

Justice Excused: The Deployment of Law in Everyday Political Encounters

This paper examines the use of legal claims by government officials and citizens in everyday political encounters involving civil rights. Data come from 580 letters sent to the federal government between 1939 and 1941, and from the replies sent by the newly formed Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department. In almost every case, the department refused to intervene and explained its refusal by making legal claims about federal jurisdiction. These legal claims masked the department's discretionary choices and thus helped depoliticize the encounters. Surprisingly, however, a substantial number of letter writers challenged the government's legal claims by deploying their own legal and moral arguments. The willingness of these citizens to challenge official legal pronouncements cautions against making broad generalizations about the capacity of ordinary people to respond effectively when government officials deploy legal rhetoric.     

Forecasting Recidivism in Mentally Ill Offenders Released from Prison

Little research has focused on assessing the risk of mentally ill offenders (MIOs) released from state prisons. Here we report findings for 333 mentally ill offenders released from Washington State prisons. Logistic regression identified sets of variables that forecasted felony and violent reconviction as accurately as state-of-the-art risk assessment instruments. Sums of simple recoded versions of these variables predicted reoffense as well as complex logistic regression equations. Five of these 9 variables were found to be relative protective factors. Findings are discussed in terms of the value of stock correctional variables in forecasting risk, the need to base actuarial risk assessments on local data, the importance of protective factors in assessing MIO risk, and the need for dynamic, situational, and clinical variables that can further sharpen predictive accuracy of emergent risk in the community.     

Nationalism, Civil Society, and the Prospects for Freedom in Eastern Europe

The events of 1989 in Eastern Europe represented an alliance between two dynamics: anti-Soviet and anti-communist. Once the "double rejective" task of the revolution was complete, these dynamics began to diverge as the space created for freedom filled with the competing demands of nationalism and civil society. Building freedom in Eastern Europe today is associated with overcoming the economic and social dislocation inherited from communism and developing the institutions and attitudes required for a civil society. But it is confronted above all by the attractions of a tribal nationalism which threaten the entire project of creating an open society.